Twee is a loaded word, but twee things are not necessarily bad.
April and Andy’s relationship, from their individual personalities
right down to their manic pixie dream girl wedding (so kooky, so
spontaneous!), is fundamentally twee, and it’s fun to watch. So are
things like Leslie’s love of waffles, Ann Perkins’ bafflement about
men, and Rob Lowe’s entire character. But the sort of childish
optimism that makes “Parks and Rec” so entertaining can, at its
worst, edge into self-satisfaction, encouraging a willful retreat
from the world as it is into an uncomplicated, low-stakes vision of
the world as people with anxiety problems would like it to be. You
could see that clash when Ben moved in with April and Andy and was
legitimately appalled by their inability to take care of themselves
as adults. The whole third season of the show consisted of every
other character trying to make Ben more twee, and while it’s been
great television, it’s weird politics. Ben’s job is to keep Pawnee
running within its budget, but people keep insisting that he can
just go ahead and spend more money without worrying where it’s
going to come from. When Ben gives an individual money for plates
and he instead buys a marshmallow shooter, that’s hilarious.
But when Ben gives the parks department more money, that money
comes out of someone else’s budget. Maybe it’s a social program,
maybe it’s the schools. No matter how well-intentioned, that
decision is not without consequence, and pretending otherwise just
validates the very twee, very middle-class vision of living in the
world. There’s always more money somewhere, right?

I may be the only person in the world who really liked the first
season of “Parks & Rec.” I was excited to see something on
network television that depicted the administrative aspect of
politics accurately, and I loved the clash between Leslie’s sincere
ideals—she really did want to build a park, and she really did
think government could help people (nevermind Paskin’s calling her
a clone of the eternally self-centered Michael Scott)—and the
difficulty she had putting them into practice. In the second
episode, Leslie eagerly hosts a public meeting, hoping to impress
her hardened realpolitik mom, but gets blindsided by angry comments
and has to filibuster her way out of it. There was something really
at stake there: if Leslie didn’t make that cheap and transparently
desperate last-minute move, the project would have been dead.
Contrast that to this season, when, as Paskin puts it, there’s
never any chance that Leslie will fail, just “the possibility they
will not meet her very high standards.” Since we like her, that’s
great. But a politics in which there’s never any chance of one
person failing isn’t a democracy. If you look at it from the other
ideological pole, Leslie’s not a more successful Obama. She’s a
liberal Dick Cheney.

Take, too, season one’s fifth episode, “The Banquet.” Leslie
needs to get a meeting with a zoning official for the project to
move forward, and her mother urges her to exploit some personal
information she has about the official to get what she wants.
Leslie is uncomfortable with this, but considers doing it anyway
because it’s a means to her desired end. The way events fall out is
a perfect representation of what it’s like to be an outsider in
politics: after taking the high road but failing, Leslie gives in
and tries to blackmail the official, but does it so awkwardly that
it blows up in her face. The episode highlights that what matters
in politics isn’t the strength of your ideals but your command of
the process, and that you can’t help anyone without a killer
instinct. Leslie’s very twee-ness places her outside the old-boys
network that would teach her those skills, and she has to decide
whether she cares more about being true to herself or about
achieving what she thinks is right. Watching her navigate a
compromise between ideals and goals was fascinating. It spoke to
the essential political need to sublimate your own desires to the
collective activity in which government workers are always
involved. But in the current season, this tension has been removed.
Leslie never has to navigate morally problematic situations. Her
problems negotiating the power structures of city government have
somehow disappeared, and though she had been an outsider just two
years prior, she now knows everyone in town intimately. When she
runs into a problem with a park split over two towns, she just gets
the gang together and builds a baseball field in a day. It’s a
lovely ending; but as a reflection of politics, it’s on a par with
acting like we’re in a Mickey Rooney picture. Let’s put on a show!
Let’s balance the budget! C’mon, gang!

Poniewozik wrote that the first season had “an off-putting dark
edge.” It may be true that the show’s tendency to not always have
everything work out displeased the audience (though according to
the Wikipedia, there were about a million fewer average viewers
per show for seasons two and three than there were for season one).
But the idea of a show about politics without a dark edge
seems deeply weird to me. Politics is the business of power, and
one of the oldest human endeavors. How is that not going to be a
little dark? That people expect politics to be some sort of folksy,
sincere charm-off is one of the biggest reasons people like Leslie
tend to be unsuccessful once they actually get into government, a
reality that was part of the first season but utterly gone by the
third. There’s certainly nothing wrong with the “comedy of
niceness” as it’s practiced in some places, particularly
non-narrative or non-representational places like Jimmy Fallon’s
show or Beyoncé’s music. But our ideas about institutions like
government (or the health care industry, or the courts, or
advertising) are powerfully shaped by how they are portrayed in
popular culture. And many of the writers above have talked about
how “Parks & Rec” represents a heartening vision of politics.
But if that vision isn’t based in any sort of reality, do we want
to let it ride anyway? Or can the fantasy do more harm than good?
Are we really well served by unrealistic visions of how pleasant
politics could be?

Another example is Ron
Swanson, one of the most beloved characters on the show. And why
not: he likes steaks and whiskey and emotional reticence, just like
hipster boys everywhere! But in season one, Ron wasn’t part of the
gang. He was an obstacle in Leslie’s path. And that’s the role
you’ll find people like Ron playing in administrative departments
around the country: working to cut or eliminate social programs, to
ensure that taxes aren’t raised, and to outsource vital services.
These paradoxically anti-government government employees get away
with it not because there’s broad agreement with their ideological
position. While only 15% of Americans
are libertarian, most people still agree that government is the
problem. That’s not because they dislike the idea of government.
It’s because they have a fundamental distrust of this government,
of government right now. But what can we do about that? Well, if
you think about trust as the distance between what we expect the
government to do and how it actually performs, then there are two
angles to work. One is Leslie’s: act more trustworthy! But no
matter how trustworthy government officials are, it won’t make a
difference if our expectations for government are impossibly high.
If we expect government to work in the way it does on “Parks and
Rec”—convivially, quickly, logically, joyously—then we will always
be disappointed, we will always distrust those who work in our
interests, and the Ron Swansons of the world will always win.

“Parks and Rec” presents a provincial utopia of
philosoraptor-kings in which there are never competing legitimate
interests, never hard choices, and never any need to engage in
political maneuvering. Between seasons one and three, Leslie
Knope’s fiefdom transformed from a recognizable example of
small-city politics to a kind of put-a-bird-on-it polis where
decisions are made not on the basis of power (or analytical rigor)
but out of authenticity, whimsy and friendship. Easy enough when
all that’s at stake are things like parks and zoos and festivals
with tiny horses; but if Leslie and the gang ever had to deal with
the real issues facing municipalities—that is, things like schools,
taxes, and infrastructure—that just wouldn’t fly. Some viewers may
like this optimistic vision of politics, but I’d argue that the
vision isn’t optimistic, it’s fundamentally unreal. Leslie’s
department within the Pawnee government is the political equivalent
of
Li’l Sebastian: they never have to do any real work, and they
never have to win any races. They just have to stand around looking
adorable. And that’s a great thing for sitcom characters to do. But
it’s a dangerous way to expect politics to work.